I always say Coach Trestman reminds me of the first Willy Wonka. Not the Johnny Depp one.

I have about 3,500 books, maybe more.

I have a library, and it's like I want to beat Belle on 'Beauty and the Beast' and have a better library than she had.

The way we have been programmed and conditioned to think about the black kid being an athlete, it's like every young black boy people would see say 'what sport do you play?' instead of just asking 'what do you do?' 'What are you interested in?'

Everyone is creative, but we are only as creative as we allow ourselves to be.

I'm the creative director of awesomeness.

Creativity is something that is forever.

I've always wanted to create. I didn't ever want to just be a football player, so I'm just bringing all these childhood dreams together to try to accomplish the things I want to do before I die.

I'm trying to be the best dad ever. And being a husband is a whole other business itself.

I feel like there are not a lot of us, in terms of African American owners or creators. I'm trying to get kids and communities to think not just about playing for the team, but owning the team. You don't always have to be the worker bee.

With 'Dear Black Boy,' I wanted to encourage BIack boys to dream outside of sports and think differently.

My ultimate goal is to live forever, but the only way to live forever is to create and you always want to be there for your kid.

It's so easy to get caught up in the future and in the past.

I feel like kids don't dream big enough. With art being taken out of school, it's important to know you can create as well.

I believe happiness breeds success and not the other way around.

I want to be like the Nike or Apple of children's books.

I've always been interested in creating things for kids.

For some reason as a kid being a smart athlete didn't seem like the right thing, because you didn't fit in. You didn't want to be too smart because you'd be a nerd. But then you didn't want to be too dumb either because then you didn't get the grades you needed to play.

If you ask a kid what their dreams are, they will give you a list that is as long as I am tall. Once you get older that list gets shorter and shorter, so dreams shrink. I think dreams should grow as you get older.

I've always been interested in clothing because it's an extension of how we feel.

As young black boys in Alief, Texas, my friends and I often spent afternoons imagining ourselves scoring the game-winning touchdown at the end of the Super Bowl.

Black fathers are often disappointed if their sons aren't good at sports. Not excelling at sports as a black boy meant not being cool - even weirder, it meant not really being black.

Playing in the NFL isn't really - and shouldn't have to be - every black boy's dream. But black boys don't always know that their dreams off the field matter.

When you look at me see the father, the awesome dad, the author, film director, business owner, champion, friend, Hufflepuff beast.

When my daughter was born, I was reading a lot of children's books, and there weren't any characters who looked like her. For all the content that's out there, there aren't many African-American protagonists. I looked at it like, if there isn't someone else creating it then I have to do it myself.

What if Macauley Culkin were black in 'Home Alone?' Most people would write it differently... but I would write it the same way.

I'm a straightforward person. I think sometimes it comes off the wrong way.

I'm like always smiling but I'm superaggressive. I have like a different type of chip on my shoulder.

Every day brings new choices.

The way we do anything is the way we do everything.

Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld.

Rest until you feel like playing, then play until you feel like resting, period. Never do anything else.

Since our society equates happiness with youth, we often assume that sorrow, quiet desperation, and hopelessness go hand in hand with getting older. They don't. Emotional pain or numbness are symptoms of living the wrong life, not a long life.

Caring for your inner child has a powerful and surprisingly quick result: Do it and the child heals.

Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone.

Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.

I really do think that any deep crisis is an opportunity to make your life extraordinary in some way.

Only since the Industrial Revolution have most people worked in places away from their homes or been left to raise small children without the help of multiple adults, making for an unsupported life.

Ten years ago, I still feared loss enough to abandon myself in order to keep things stable. I'd smile when I was sad, pretend to like people who appalled me. What I now know is that losses aren't cataclysmic if they teach the heart and soul their natural cycle of breaking and healing.

All mental hygiene is based on the core practice of doing nothing. Most of us are good at wasting time, staring at the wall while telling ourselves we should be working. We call this doing nothing, but our brains are furiously active. We think constantly, and our thinking is often rife with distress.

Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.

Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury.

The average adult laughs 15 times a day; the average child, more than 400 times.

What happens when we're willing to feel bad is that, sure enough, we often feel bad - but without the stress of futile avoidance. Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests, and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes parts of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined.

The thing I love most about my job is watching people age backward, becoming more lively and energetic as they free themselves from situations that are toxic to their essential selves.

You have the freedom to live and let live, to love and let love. Granting yourself that freedom is one of the healthiest, most constructive things you can do for yourself and the people who matter to you.

Whether you've seen angels floating around your bedroom or just found a ray of hope at a lonely moment, choosing to believe that something unseen is caring for you can be a life-shifting exercise.

When you meet people, show real appreciation, then genuine curiosity.

I feel about aging the way William Saroyan said he felt about death: Everybody has to do it, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case.